By Bart Maldonado, General Manager Barcelona West Hartford
Once we got settled at our apartments that were across the street from the cathedral in downtown Sevilla, we headed to our first meal. As we walked there through this beautiful, historic city it all finally started to sink in. After months of anticipation, my sure to be once-in-a-lifetime experience was about to begin. I had taken my vitamins, I had taken my probiotics, I had my notebook and I had my camera ready for the onslaught of incredible food, wine, sherries and all the other delicious alcoholic beverages I was about to partake in.
After a 10-minute walk we arrived at Bar Las Teresas, which is one of the oldest tapas bars in all of the city. We were warmly greeted and sat outside, right on the street. Everyone started with a glass of wine, sherry or cerveza. We fired off our first round of tapas, toasted, took our first sip and in that moment you could see everyone at the table relax and their demeanor begin to change as we began what was to be an incredible week. We had arrived. It was warm. And after all the waiting, we were ready to eat.
First, the mojama de barbate that we had at Las Teresas was the most unique and interesting thing we ate all day. This came in our third course at lunch and was a cured and smoked, thinly sliced tuna loin. It was blood red, just like rare tuna should be, and lightly drizzled with local olive oil and fresh cracked pepper. Very simple, but just an incredible balance between the taste of the sea from the tuna and the smoke. Everyone liked it so much that Farah, who is our food purchaser for the company, went in the kitchen (as only Farah would!) and found out the name of the product and where it could be purchased.
My favorite item was at dinner that night at La Mehcela where we had squid stuffed with black pudding, which contained morcilla over a roasted apple puree that had white wine and cinnamon. Everything was perfect. The squid was cooked perfectly, the sausage wasn’t too salty, the apple was barely sweet but the spice of the sauce paired well with the spice in the morcilla. The dish was well executed and perfect. We had a lot of incredible dishes that night but everyone at the table agreed that this was the standout.
Gretchen, our Director of Wine and Spirits and our amazing host, really wanted us to understand the true importance of sherry in the Spanish tapas experience. A few of us started off with manzanillas and finos, which are lighter-bodied sherries, but with the meal she ordered a bottle of Bodegas Tradicion VOS 30 year. Just incredible! Incredibly complex amontillado! Amontillados have this delicate balance of nuttiness and acidity and, in my opinion, this was one of the most in-depth sherries I’ve ever tasted. I could have drunk the whole bottle, but I didn’t want to be “that guy” after only our first meal of the trip. I would try to leave that title to someone else.
There was a very small detail that caught my attention. At Las Teresas the server brought out the chilled bottle of sherry in a terra cotta pot similar to the pots you might garden with. He was using it as a wine chiller, which I thought was a very rustic but also ingenious vessel to use for this purpose. Like I said, a very small detail, but these little touches are things that guests notice and something like using that as a wine chiller seems so much more unique than a cookie cutter stainless steel or marble wine chiller.
